Laura Soames (

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

, 1840–1895) was a British

phonetician Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, best known for her work applying phonetic principles to the teaching of the pronunciation of English and of foreign languages. An important contribution of her work was to popularize phonetics among language teachers.

Career

Soames was a language teacher whose interest in phonetics was linked to her interest in spelling reform and the teaching of reading. She was an active member of the Phonetic Teachers' Association, which evolved into the

International Phonetic Association The International Phonetic Association (IPA; , API) is an organization that promotes the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. The IPA's major contribution to phonetics is the International Phoneti ...

(IPA). In 1890 she was elected to the council of the IPA. She was highly regarded by its founder

Passy Passy () is an area of Paris, France, located in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, 16th arrondissement, on the Rive Droite, Right Bank. It is adjacent to Auteuil, Paris, Auteuil to the southwest, and Chaillot to the northeast. It is home to many ...

and other phoneticians in Europe, including Wilhelm Viëtor (1850–1918), founder of the journal ''Phonetische Studien''. Viëtor revised Soames' influential ''Introduction to Phonetics (English, French and German)'' (Soames 1891) and published it under the title, ''Introduction to English, French and German Phonetics'' (Soames, Viëtor 1899, still in print). Later he edited and added to a manuscript she was working on at the time of her death which combined revisions of the ''Introduction'' with aspects of ''The Child’s Key to Reading'' (Soames 1894), the book which had established her as a force in language education. This edited work was published as ''The Teacher’s Manual'' (Soames, n.d., Viëtor 1897). Soames is also known for her 1889 proposal, which she credited to Curwen, that principal accents (stresses) are

isochron In the mathematical theory of dynamical systems, an isochron is a set of initial conditions for the system that all lead to the same long-term behaviour. Mathematical isochron An introductory example Consider the ordinary differential equation ...

ous in English, that is, they appear at equal time intervals. The well-known phonetician

Henry Sweet Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...

quickly disagreed (1889, ''Le maître phonétique''), and the argument continues to the present day.

Legacy

Soames left a bequest to the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

to fund the Laura Soames Prize, which was intended to promote the study of phonetics by awarding an annual prize in the Department of Phonetics at University College for the most distinguished piece of research work dealing with the phonetic structure of a living language.

Selected publications

* Soames, L. 1889. On English stress. '' Le maître phonétique''. mars 1889: 34–35. * Soames, L. 1891. ''An introduction to phonetics''. London: Swan Sonnenschein. * Soames, L. (n.d.). ''The Teacher's Manual: Pt. 1 The sounds of English''. London: Swan Sonnenschein. * Viëtor, Wilhelm, editor. 1897. ''The Teacher's Manual: Pt. 2.'' London: Swan Sonnenschein.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soames, Laura Phoneticians 1840 births 1895 deaths British women linguists Language teachers People from Brighton Schoolteachers from Sussex